My Approach to Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a therapeutic approach designed to help you accept uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, rather than fighting or avoiding them. ACT encourages you to connect with your deepest values and take purposeful action towards living a meaningful life, regardless of the challenges you face. By embracing mindfulness techniques and cultivating psychological flexibility, ACT empowers you to make decisions based on what truly matters to you.

How ACT Can Help:

• Increase Psychological Flexibility: Learn to embrace thoughts and emotions without being controlled by them, allowing for more freedom and choice in your actions.

• Clarify and Live by Your Values: Identify your core values and take intentional steps to live in a way that aligns with them, helping you build a life that feels meaningful.

• Overcome Avoidance: ACT helps you break free from the cycle of avoiding difficult feelings or situations, fostering courage and resilience.

• Cultivate Mindfulness: Enhance your ability to stay present and focused on the here and now, reducing anxiety and promoting emotional well-being.

ACT is particularly beneficial for those dealing with anxiety, chronic pain, depression, or a desire to live more fully in alignment with personal values.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a structured, time-limited therapy that helps you recognise and challenge unhelpful thought patterns that contribute to emotional distress. By changing the way you think, CBT empowers you to alter the way you feel and behave. It is a practical approach focused on the present, helping you develop skills to manage difficulties in everyday life and prevent negative thoughts from spiraling.

How CBT Can Help:

• Challenge Negative Thinking: Identify and reframe distorted thinking patterns that contribute to anxiety, depression, or stress.

• Develop Coping Skills: Learn concrete strategies to manage difficult emotions, stress, and challenging situations, building resilience in the process.

• Problem-Solve Effectively: Gain tools for effective problem-solving and decision-making, helping you feel more in control of your life.

• Improve Emotional Regulation: Understand the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, allowing you to regulate your emotions more effectively.

CBT is effective for a wide range of issues, including anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and stress management, and is suitable for individuals looking for practical, goal-focused strategies to improve their mental health.

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is an evidence-based approach that combines elements of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with techniques to build self-compassion. It’s particularly helpful for individuals who struggle with self-criticism, anxiety, depression, and trauma.

CFT helps you develop a kinder, more supportive relationship with yourself, reducing negative self-talk and fostering emotional resilience. By learning to approach your challenges with compassion, you can heal from shame, manage difficult emotions, and improve your overall well-being.

How CFT Can Help:

• Reduce Self-Criticism: Replace negative self-judgment with a more compassionate mindset.

• Build Emotional Resilience: Develop the tools to cope with stress, anxiety, and depression in healthier ways.

• Address Shame: Heal from feelings of shame and self-blame.

• Improve Self-Worth: Cultivate greater self-acceptance and emotional balance.

CFT is ideal for anyone looking to overcome emotional difficulties and enhance their mental well-being through compassion and self-care.

Psychodynamic Therapy is rooted in the belief that unconscious thoughts and past experiences significantly shape your current feelings, relationships, and behaviour. This approach focuses on uncovering hidden emotional conflicts and exploring how past events, often from childhood, influence your present-day life. By gaining insight into these underlying patterns, psychodynamic therapy helps you resolve internal conflicts and build healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

How Psychodynamic Therapy Can Help:

• Increase Self-Awareness: Explore how early experiences, unconscious thoughts, and unresolved conflicts shape your behaviour and emotional responses today.

• Uncover Deep-Seated Emotional Patterns: Examine recurring themes in your relationships, emotions, and actions to gain clarity on their root causes.

• Resolve Past Conflicts: Address unresolved trauma or emotional wounds from the past, enabling you to heal and move forward.

• Improve Interpersonal Relationships: By understanding the influence of the past on your present behaviour, you can develop healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

Psychodynamic therapy is especially useful for those seeking deep insight into their emotional life, understanding complex relationship patterns, and addressing issues like unresolved trauma, chronic anxiety, or depression.

Somatic Healing focuses on the connection between your body and mind, recognising that physical symptoms and emotional distress are often intertwined. This therapy uses body-centered techniques to release stored emotions and trauma that may be trapped in the body. Through mindful awareness of physical sensations, breathwork, and movement, somatic healing helps you reconnect with your body, release tension, and promote emotional healing.

How Somatic Healing Therapy Can Help:

• Release Stored Trauma: Address the impact of trauma stored in the body through physical techniques like breathwork, gentle movement, and body awareness.

• Increase Body Awareness: Learn to tune into your body’s signals and use this awareness to process emotions in a safe, supportive environment.

• Heal from Physical and Emotional Pain: Understand the physical manifestations of emotional pain and work to release these through somatic techniques.

• Improve Emotional Regulation: Use body-based practices to regulate intense emotions, such as anxiety or stress, helping you feel more balanced and centered.

Somatic healing is particularly beneficial for individuals who have experienced trauma, chronic stress, or physical manifestations of emotional struggles. It’s an ideal approach if you feel disconnected from your body or struggle with emotional overwhelm.

Mindfulness helps you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings without judgment, breaking cycles of negative thinking that can lead to depression, anxiety, and stress. By developing a regular mindfulness practice, you learn to respond more skilfully to difficult emotions and prevent relapse into depressive or anxious episodes.

How Mindfulness Can Help:

• Enhance Mindfulness: Develop the ability to observe your thoughts and emotions in the present moment, without getting caught up in them.

• Break Negative Thought Cycles: Learn to identify and interrupt the patterns of thinking that contribute to anxiety, depression, and stress.

• Prevent Relapse: Mindfulness is particularly effective in preventing the recurrence of depression by helping you notice early signs and take action before they escalate.

• Increase Emotional Awareness: By observing your emotional patterns, you can respond more thoughtfully to difficult situations, reducing emotional reactivity.

Mindfulness is especially beneficial for individuals who have experienced recurrent depression or anxiety and want to develop lasting tools to manage their mental health through mindfulness and cognitive strategies.